Miliband set to head up probe into Labour loss
FORMER Labour leader Ed Miliband will be among those heading up a major inquiry into the party’s disastrous General Election result, it has been confirmed.
The review will include interviewing all 59 MPs who lost their seats during the crumbling of Labour’s socalled “red wall” of constituencies in the north of England, the Midlands and Wales.
As well as Mr Miliband, who led the party to its 2015 defeat, former Shadow Education Secretary Lucy Powell and Birmingham Ladywood MP Shabana Mahmood will spearhead the review.
Other confirmed commissioners include Jo Platt, former MP for Leigh – one of the lost seats from Labour’s heartlands in Greater Manchester – Sienna Rodgers, editor of Labourlist, a website favourable to the party, and James Meadway, former economic adviser to Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell.
A trade union representative and a local party organiser are also expected to join the panel.
Ms Powell said the inquiry would take a “real and meaningful look” at why the party had “fallen short” at four consecutive elections.
“We have lost the last four elections and we all have to accept that our offers to the country have been insufficient,” said the Manchester Central MP.
“We should have taken the time to understand our losses previously. It’s now profoundly important for the future of our party and country that we take a real and meaningful look at why we have fallen short.
“This inquiry gives us the opportunity to listen to members, candidates and the public and I hope our whole movement takes it in the spirit it is offered and takes part.”
The commission, according to a spokesman, will be made up of voices from “different Labour traditions” and aims to “rise above the factional infighting which has coloured much of Labour politics for the last four years”.
It hopes to capitalise on the “millions of conversations” voters had with Labour campaigners in a bid to come up with a plan for Labour’s return to Downing Street.
The party last won an election in 2005 under the leadership of former Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The former leader of 13 years gave a scathing speech last week, telling an audience in London that the “takeover of the Labour Party by the far left” had “turned it into a glorified protest movement, with cult trimmings, utterly incapable of being a credible government”.
The review commissioners plan to take written and oral evidence from all the defeated candidates in former Labour-held seats, and those on the party’s target list; hold listening events and focus groups with the public in the heartland seats in England, Scotland and Wales where Labour lost; analyse available election data; speak to organisers, councillors and activists around the country about what went right and wrong; conduct a survey of Labour members and activists; and conclude by “mapping out a route” back to power for Labour.
Ms Rodgers, of Labourlist, said the review would pore over the results in “an even-handed way, which doesn’t start with blaming one faction, or individual”.
But former Welsh Government Minister and ex-Rhondda AM Leighton Andrews said he was not optimistic about the inquiry’s ability to engineer changes in the party for the better.
Mr Andrews decided to leave Labour earlier this year.
Asked what it would take to get him to rejoin, he said: “A credible leader who had a chance of restoring the public’s belief in the party over the next five years so that it had a chance of returning to power.
“Also, I would like to see the party address seriously the problems that have afflicted it in recent years, not least the antisemitism which has caused so much hurt and so much damage. I also want the cultism to end. But I am not optimistic about this review because in my view lessons need to be learnt before a new leader is elected.
“I believe Corbyn should have gone immediately after the election and been replaced by an interim leader in place while the inquiry undertook its work and published its findings. The leadership election should have taken place in, say, a year’s time, after the review had been properly considered.
“As it is, Corbyn remains in charge of the party machine and is trying to ensure that his favoured candidate is elected to succeed him. I believe this makes a mockery of the review.”
Mr Andrews said he also thought the Parliamentary Labour Party should elect its own leader.
“One MP has told me that would not be in accordance with the party’s constitution, but I don’t accept that’s right – if they wanted to, they could do it. But maybe the will isn’t there. One of the problems the party has in Wales is that there is less inclination now to seek more autonomy for Welsh Labour than used to be the case. That’s linked to the election of Mark Drakeford as leader, whose ideology is closely aligned to Jeremy Corbyn.”
Mr Andrews said Labour should be pushing for constitutional change, including the replacement of the House of Lords by a new House of the Nations and Regions, as well as a change in the electoral system to one based on proportional representation: “I am interested in seeing what is recommended by the Dunlop Review [which is considering how UK Government spending in the nations and regions could strengthen the Union],” he said.